{"id":717,"date":"2011-12-15T11:07:12","date_gmt":"2011-12-15T17:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=717"},"modified":"2013-06-17T18:26:22","modified_gmt":"2013-06-17T18:26:22","slug":"nicaragua","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=717","title":{"rendered":"Live Like You Were Dying \u2013 Nicaragua \u2013 [12\/12\/2011]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>She said I was in my early forties,
\nwith a lot of life before me
\nWhen a moment came that stopped me on a dime
\nI spent most of the next days
\nLooking at the x-rays
\nTalkin\u2019 bout the options,
\nAnd talkin\u2019 bout sweet time
\nI asked her when it sank in
\nThat this might really be the real end
\nHow\u2019s it hit you when you get that kind of news?<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve talked a lot about how life goes on without us when we\u2019re away. Life goes on no matter what, no matter who you are, or where you are \u2013 but every so often, something happens that drives that fact home. More-over, sometimes something happens that drives home just how precious life is, and how quickly everything can change on a dime.<\/p>\n

I logged into facebook last night and found myself hit with the fact that one of my friends from my undergraduate days (which seem like a very long time ago sometimes), was diagnosed with cancer in November. She and I aren\u2019t particularly close anymore, in fact, we\u2019ve barely kept in touch over the last few years, but that didn\u2019t stop my heart from clenching, or the tears from coming. Tears of shock I suppose more than anything. She\u2019s barely 30 years old, not such a great deal older than me, has a husband and a family and a life that\u2019s spread out before her with everything to offer \u2013 a kind of life that could easily have been mine, if I had gone a different direction – then overnight, all that changes, and her life becomes medical bills and hospital calls and surgery appointments. She still has everything she had before, but like an unwanted visitor on Christmas morning, suddenly she has this other…thing…<\/p>\n

To say it threw me for a loop is an understatement.<\/p>\n

Do I know this girl? No, not really. Not anymore \u2013 but she touched my life none-the-less, however briefly, and I would not be the person I am today without her. Just like I would not be the person I am today without any one of the random people I\u2019ve interacted with over the past 29 years of my existence.<\/p>\n

And she\u2019ll be fine, which is what I keep reminding myself of, by the time I found out the news she had already been through surgery, and the doctors are quite sure they got everything. It\u2019s just that…her situation got me to thinking about a lot of things…about how things can change, and how quickly things happen.<\/p>\n

People tell you to shake off things, to focus on your own life and take on the problems that belong to you \u2013 but that\u2019s not really possible, not with the world getting smaller every day. Now more than ever, one life touches so many other lives….<\/p>\n

My mother says that my actual problem isn\u2019t that I miss things while I\u2019m away. It\u2019s that I miss nothing<\/em>, that I grab hold of everything, of everyone\u2019s pain, joy, exuberance and sorrow, cling to it and try to understand it, to solve it, like it was some great puzzle that I can\u2019t quite find the edges of. She says it\u2019s a gift. I say that well…I\u2019m not so sure.<\/p>\n

What I am sure of is this: We all grow up thinking that we\u2019re invincible on some level, despite continuing and escalating proof to the contrary. We all think that tragedy happens to other people, even those of us who have already seen too much. It\u2019s old, and it\u2019s a clich\u00e9, and in some ways I hate to say it but none the less: live each and every day, every single moment, as if it might be your last. Take that cruise you\u2019ve been putting off, take your kids to fly a kite, go for ice cream, go zip lining, jump out of a perfectly good airplane, go to Disneyland, teach yourself how to knit…whatever it is that you\u2019ve been putting off because you wouldn\u2019t be good at it\/don\u2019t have time for it\/have more important things to do\/think it would be irresponsible…do it anyway..<\/p>\n

If only because your whole life can turn on a dime…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

She said I was in my early forties, with a lot of life before me When a moment came that stopped me on a dime I spent most of the next days Looking at the x-rays Talkin\u2019 bout the options, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,14,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-below-the-waterline","category-panama-relocation-cruise","category-reflections-below-the-waterline"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-bz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=717"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2199,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions\/2199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}